Thommo
Hates everyone equally!
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- Dec 4, 2004
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CFW With Dual Boot Option, GameOS or Linux booted from HDD – Graf_Chokolo
Graf_Chokolo, a prominent figure in PS3 scene had explained more of his new findings in PS3 securities. The most interesting part from what i can understand today is the possibility of a CFW with dual boot option either GameOS or Linux. For example, a 3.55 CFW that can also boot 3.56 official firmware, sounds nice eh for legit users? We can have homebrews and official ones on our PS3. Let’s find out more on the devs discussion.
Asked whether it is possible to launch dev_flash off of an another HDD region by Estx.
@graf_chokolo, do you know if it is possible to launch a virtual flash off of an encrypted (or decrypted for that matter) HDD for recovery purposes.
The most basic of code would suffice, if we could boot linux we could access dev_flash0~3 and replace the files.
Just an idea, but the data signals do pulse when you turn the PS3 on when ‘completely’ bricked. How-ever USB000+ don’t, just thought it could be a service channel?
And here is Graf_Chokolo response.
@Estx
Yeah, it would be possible to redirect dev_flash to another HDD region, e.g. by patching Hypervisor’s storage subsystem. HDD has enough space for that.
And i figured out that the size of VFLASH region where 3.15 stored otheros.bld can be doubled and i will be able to store decompressed Linux bootloader otheros.bld on this VFLASH region It will simplify HV patching immensely, i do not need now to decompress Linux bootloader in HV. I will test it today and report back. There are 0×2000 extra unused sectors between the VFLASH region for otheros.bld and the next VFLASH region, so i can use those sectors and increase the size of VFLASH region for otheros.bld.
We could make a CFW by patching HV with dual boot option, either GameOS or Linux could be booted from HDD.
ModIT asked an interesting question about dual booting, possibbly CFW & OFW right on the console which proves crucial for legit users who needs homebrew.
Nice graf!
This makes it interesting – what about Dual-Boot : 2x GameOS with different firmware?
CFW 3.55 and OFW 3.56 e.g ?
p_hiddy says this.
@ModIT, that’s the idea. Of course, trying to boot 3.56 GameOS with a 3.55 HV might not work too well (but it would be awesome if it did). It’s interesting to note that the VFLASH is designed to replicate the 256MB of NAND flash on the early fats. This means that it has a 16MB core os region (it’s either VFLASH region 1 or region 3). If you redirect the FLASH device to read and write to the core os on VFLASH, you could boot into CFW, and then reboot into OFW to go online. You might even be able to set it up so that you could have a seperate OFW GameOS partition for use online, and you’d be completely legit for online. It also has the wonderful side-benefit of keeping people from cheating online.
While Graf_Chokolo had a different view.
@ModIt
It’s not as easy as booting Linux from HDD or booting second lv2 kernel from FLASH. I don’t want to say it’s impossible but it’s very hard.
I updated now my partition table of VFLASH and incresed the size of VFLASH region where Linux bootloader is stored. After that i stored petitboot Linux bootloader on VFLASH successfully. Next step – patching HV at runtime and booting petitboot from HDD which will allow me to install a Linux distribution on a HDD region on my 3.41 PS3.
UPDATE: Graf_Chokolo explained further.
@p-hiddy
CORE OS is not on VFLASH, it’s on a real FLASH, NOR flash. That makes it hard to redirect, i would say impossible. But by creating our HV which could switch ISO loaders table and redirecting VFLASH it would be possible to boot 2 different GameOS versions. For that we need our own patched HV.
source dukio.
Graf_Chokolo, a prominent figure in PS3 scene had explained more of his new findings in PS3 securities. The most interesting part from what i can understand today is the possibility of a CFW with dual boot option either GameOS or Linux. For example, a 3.55 CFW that can also boot 3.56 official firmware, sounds nice eh for legit users? We can have homebrews and official ones on our PS3. Let’s find out more on the devs discussion.
Asked whether it is possible to launch dev_flash off of an another HDD region by Estx.
@graf_chokolo, do you know if it is possible to launch a virtual flash off of an encrypted (or decrypted for that matter) HDD for recovery purposes.
The most basic of code would suffice, if we could boot linux we could access dev_flash0~3 and replace the files.
Just an idea, but the data signals do pulse when you turn the PS3 on when ‘completely’ bricked. How-ever USB000+ don’t, just thought it could be a service channel?
And here is Graf_Chokolo response.
@Estx
Yeah, it would be possible to redirect dev_flash to another HDD region, e.g. by patching Hypervisor’s storage subsystem. HDD has enough space for that.
And i figured out that the size of VFLASH region where 3.15 stored otheros.bld can be doubled and i will be able to store decompressed Linux bootloader otheros.bld on this VFLASH region It will simplify HV patching immensely, i do not need now to decompress Linux bootloader in HV. I will test it today and report back. There are 0×2000 extra unused sectors between the VFLASH region for otheros.bld and the next VFLASH region, so i can use those sectors and increase the size of VFLASH region for otheros.bld.
We could make a CFW by patching HV with dual boot option, either GameOS or Linux could be booted from HDD.
ModIT asked an interesting question about dual booting, possibbly CFW & OFW right on the console which proves crucial for legit users who needs homebrew.
Nice graf!
This makes it interesting – what about Dual-Boot : 2x GameOS with different firmware?
CFW 3.55 and OFW 3.56 e.g ?
p_hiddy says this.
@ModIT, that’s the idea. Of course, trying to boot 3.56 GameOS with a 3.55 HV might not work too well (but it would be awesome if it did). It’s interesting to note that the VFLASH is designed to replicate the 256MB of NAND flash on the early fats. This means that it has a 16MB core os region (it’s either VFLASH region 1 or region 3). If you redirect the FLASH device to read and write to the core os on VFLASH, you could boot into CFW, and then reboot into OFW to go online. You might even be able to set it up so that you could have a seperate OFW GameOS partition for use online, and you’d be completely legit for online. It also has the wonderful side-benefit of keeping people from cheating online.
While Graf_Chokolo had a different view.
@ModIt
It’s not as easy as booting Linux from HDD or booting second lv2 kernel from FLASH. I don’t want to say it’s impossible but it’s very hard.
I updated now my partition table of VFLASH and incresed the size of VFLASH region where Linux bootloader is stored. After that i stored petitboot Linux bootloader on VFLASH successfully. Next step – patching HV at runtime and booting petitboot from HDD which will allow me to install a Linux distribution on a HDD region on my 3.41 PS3.
UPDATE: Graf_Chokolo explained further.
@p-hiddy
CORE OS is not on VFLASH, it’s on a real FLASH, NOR flash. That makes it hard to redirect, i would say impossible. But by creating our HV which could switch ISO loaders table and redirecting VFLASH it would be possible to boot 2 different GameOS versions. For that we need our own patched HV.
source dukio.
